4 Public cloud providers

Classroom project webshop software

Preselected candidate solutions for building for free your own webshop

  • You may propose something else
  • You have to decide yourself which one you will use.
  • It's not a matter of picking "the best one". Be accurate in registering the stengths and weaknesses.

 

Classroom project candidate webshops

The e-webshop’s proposed here are candidates you can use for your class-project.

They have NOT been selected because they are the greatest e-commerce applications. If going for a real project later on, you will have to use other criteria then the ones we used here – which are pure practical considerations to let it work at no cost and without ICT team support in a class context.

  • A ‘free’ version should be available. Free is actually never free...in case you would want to use this later on professionally
  • Public cloud flavor: we don’t want to bother with server infrastructure, hosting e-commerce software, managing webservers – so only a ready for use solution is an option – a one stop solution.
  • No ICT skills required. It should not be necessary to have HTML / CSS knowledge to build the e-webshop

 

 

www.jimdo.com
+ very easy to use
+ excellent online store
+ wide choice of designs
+ comes with a domain name and email address

 

www.weebly.com
+ flexible
+ good blog feature
+ pricing
+ assign different access levels for editors

 

www.webs.com
+ great number of features
+ modern designs
+ very flexible
- cluttered backend

 

www.yola.com
+ easy to use
+ great support
+ excellent e-commerce
- Yola ad in Bronze plan

 

www.webnode.com
+ suited for larger (multilingual) websites
+ range of professional features
+ great for SEO
- designs

 

www.wix.com
+ impressive-looking designs
+ add animation and multimedia
+ HTML5 based in the latest version, so tablet/smartphone ready
- relatively pricy

 

www.shoply.com
-Not a general purpose website builder, but dedicated webshop
+Integrated with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
+Seller dashboard
+Marketing tools

 

https://biedmeerwebwinkels.nl/
+Multilingual support
+backend integration
+marketing tools
+ -  Focus on Dutch speaking market

 

https://www.payvment.com/
+ e-commerce on FaceBook
+ analytics
 

Scoring a provider

Scoring a provider is about scoring the product, its price, and the service you can get.

 

The product

Technology

  • Underlying technology (Open source, proprietary, market share)
  • Uses HTML5, CSS3, JS standards ?
  • Responsive webdesign (adapts to small screens such as smartphone)
  • Database driven ?
  • Supports dynamic product/page creation ?
  • Template driven
  • Integration capabilities (API’s, XML, custom, of the shelve components)

 

Internet marketing

  • Level of  SEO en SEA support
  • Social media integration
  • Linking your own domain, linking into your existing website ?
  • Affiliate tracking (e.g. traffic coming from publicity on affiliate website to your webshop)
  • Coupon codes
  • E-mail marketing integration
  • Product reviews

 

International

  • Multi currency ?
  • Multiple payment processors – also the local ones !
  • Multi language (easy of running your webshop in multiple languages)

 

Back-end integration & modules

  • Role based backoffice
  • Order management & editing
  • Inventory tracking
  • Accounting
  • Transportation
  • Shipping integration

 

Functionality

  • Flexibility
  • User registration
  • Automated user interaction & follow up
  • Returns
  • Product options

 

Reporting capabilities

  • Sales reporting
  • Web Analytics


The price

  • Monthly fee ? (many have a free version, with more feature rich paid versions)
  • Transaction fee ? (some will charge a fee on each transaction
  • Data fee ? (some will charge if the amount of traffic to your website exceed data volume thresholds)
  • Support contract ?
  • Consultancy rate ?
  • Change management rate ?


The service

More important then functionality !
 

The Service:


SLA (service level agreement) = contractual  clause between the service provider and service recipient about the quality of the service
Contains formulations on response time in case of incidents & problems, downtime, backup quality, etc...

Examples:

  • <= 4 hours downtime / month
  • 4 hours response time for a priority 1 incident, 24x7
  • 8 hours response time for a priority 2 incident, 8x5
  • Max data loss <24 hours
  • Change request lead time: 3 working days
  • Escalation channels


Service capabilities

  1. Technical service desk ?
  2. Training & consultancy ?
  3. Project support ?
  4. Ongoing support & maintenance ?
  5. Local presence ?